I Bless a Baby

Good morning everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying this absolutely fantastic Monday! This week was pretty legendary if I do say so myself. 

Last Monday we finally finished utterly destroying all the bedbugs in our apartment. Our mission apartment coordinator even got us new mattresses and box springs which at first I thought was a little overboard, but when we put the old mattresses in his truck we saw a couple of the bugs on them, and we literally fogged the place down like twice and sprayed it until we couldn't breathe. So we did it again, put bed bug covers on our new mattresses, wiped down everything in the room, put all the bedding in the washer and dryer again, and bam. We finally had a well-rested night, the first one in like 2 weeks and it felt amazing! 

This week I was able to go on an exchange with Elder Johnson who was actually in the MTC with me. We stayed in our area and it was a super awesome day! Something way interesting happened though. The day before, Elder Van Tassell and I were walking out of the building when the mom of one of our investigators came and talked to us. She said that her daughter had just had a baby, and was asking us if we could give it a name and a blessing. Now as two young elders who mostly just try to teach the restored gospel, we didn't have a lot of knowledge on how baby blessings work. Like we'd seen them in church but can you do them for nonmember babies? Can you do them outside of church? Does a missionary even hold the priesthood keys to do such a thing? We kinda just let it leave our minds and went on to work for the day.

Anyways that night we exchanged and Elder Johnson came here with me and we got a text from our investigator that said: "I will be expecting you here at 9:00 AM tomorrow for the naming ceremony. We will see you soon."....... We both looked at each other like "Oh dear." So we called Elder Van Tassell who has been around the Africans for like his whole mission and he told us to just say a special prayer with them and the baby. Don't use oil, don't give it a legit priesthood blessing, don't put your hands on its head, and don’t touch the baby at all because it's against mission rules. So... that's what we did haha. We went in the morning and there were a ton of Nigerians in the room and when we walked in they set the baby down and looked at me and said "Do you use oil?" I did my best to explain to them how we do baby blessings in church, but I was going to say a "special prayer" for their baby. So in my best Nigerian style prayer I could muster I said a prayer and I blessed that baby.

They gave me a paper with a bunch of names so I just read them all off during the prayer and they were all just doing their usual "amen." or "thank you lord" or "thank you Jesus" during the prayer. It was pretty awesome haha! I may have possibly done something slightly illegal and blasphemous but I really hope not! After the prayer I said "God is good" in Yoruba because we know quite a few words in their language because it softens them up big time when you speak it. They came to me and said "that will be the baby's name." So I may have named the baby even though they had me read like 5 names during the prayer. Afterwards they wanted to take pictures with "Pastor Jensen" and the mother and the baby and what do they do? Plop that baby right in my arms. Yes it is against the rules but what am I supposed to do, drop it? So they took tons of pictures with us and I may have illegally blessed a baby, and definitely illegally held the baby haha. Hopefully I have the keys to say a special prayer for a baby. I think so. They gave us some gifts for blessing the child including a bottle of jumex banana strawberry juice and a bottle of tea. The tea is still just chilling in the car haha. 

Later that week we were stopping by that certain family’s neighbors because we were teaching them and the door was open and they heard us knock their neighbor’s door. They opened up and said "come in!" and of course they were having a Nigerian party. They let us in and they had us dance and sing with them and then Elder Van Tassell said "let us pray" in Yoruba and they all freaked out from hearing a white boy speak their language. We said a prayer and they gave us some more pounded yam (white fufu) and agusi. Pretty exciting stuff but it's so spicy cause of those Jamaican peppers. They also gave us a drink called Malta (they all give us that) it's like this barley flavored soda, I will not lie, it is probably the worst soda ever and I don't even like soda in the first place! But now I've chugged down like 100 of these drinks and they are starting to just be like normal. They are such an incredible group of people and an awesome culture! Before we left we said “thank you” and “goodbye brothers and sisters” in Yoruba and they were literally flipping out. It was super awesome. 

The last highlight of this week was we found this African American family in the building who we started teaching, they are actually a little crazy not going to lie. It is a very small apartment with a husband in wife and their kid, who is married, and has 4 kids. And it literally has like a main room, and bedroom and a bathroom. It's meant for a max of two people. Every time we go they say "the church people are here! Mom, it's the church people!" It is definitely the most chaotic teaching environment I've ever been a part of. Every time one of the kids are yelling or something the mom yells, "shut up we're having church right now!" And of course they didn't come to church on Sunday because they see no need because "where two or three are gathered in my name there will I be also." Whatever, we'll get them eventually haha. It's been a blast teaching all those crazy kids and its pretty dang cool to be called "the church people."

That is about it for my week! More miracles happened as we saw some more of our friends come to church! We hit a new record of 46 lessons for the week and we are hyped to make this last week of the transfer a good one! Hope everyone has an amazing week! 

Elder Jensen

Some pics of the family we were teaching and a Nigerian party. 

Look how apostate and uncomfortable I look holding this baby haha

I May Have Let the Bed Bugs Bite

Honestly this was probably one of the most chaotic weeks of my mission. So many miracles, so little sleep! 

This week, probably on Tuesday, I noticed that I had some red itchy bumps on my arms that looked like mosquito bites. I shrugged it off because Chicago has plenty of those! But I did think it was a little odd that they were getting me when I was inside a building all day. Throughout the week I started getting more and more of these little bites. When I saw a bunch on my feet that's when I really started to get suspicious until I figured I probably had bed bugs.

We had been spraying our mattress with rubbing alcohol as a precaution and so that night all my bedding was bunched up already because I was spraying the mattress, and as I picked through it all sure enough I saw two of these nasty little bugs. So it's been quite the adventure! We got permission to sleep at the other elder’s apartment for a few nights until we could get it controlled, which we'll be doing pretty much for the majority of the day today. Now I'm just really hoping the other elders don't get them because we were acting like our apartment had the plague or something and took some serious precautions before going there. Teaching the humble comes with a price! But it's way worth it :) 

This week we had our first zone conference with President Shumway. What a great man! He’s a really great teacher and I have a lot of respect for him and the way he loves all of God's children. 

We saw some major miracles this week as we were able to see five of our friends enter the waters of baptism! We knew that our friend Chukwudi was going to be baptized this weekend but we had a miracle happen! There is a Nigerian family who has been coming to church for the past 4 months, but they never want to meet with the missionaries and didn't understand why they would need to be baptized. They hadn't really been taught anything past the first two lessons. Last Sunday they had let us know they finally wanted to be baptized. This week we finished up the lessons with them and set up the interview and they passed!

It was super stressful because we had to prepare them in like a week and so we saw them quite a lot this week. Also since the ward has 4 sets of missionaries, it has a lot of baptisms and so the ward decided they'd only hold one service every month for everybody at the same time so there could be more support from the ward. So if we missed this day we'd have to wait another month! Luckily it was all figured out! We were able to see the Abiola family get baptized and see the happiness that came from that! Also President and Sister Shumway came to the baptism and we were trying to explain to the Abiola family about what a mission president is and they definitely thought president Shumway was the prophet at first haha.

So even with the chaos and the bedbugs, there is no greater joy that I have had in my life than I've had here sharing the gospel. Seeing those who are baptized and the joyful life that it prepares them to live is absolutely amazing. It's also incredible to have been able to see the faith of some of these people, the sacrifices they make. 

We had a few awesome lessons with Darlene this week and she had a tithing slip on her table and already completely understood the commandment and committed to pay tithing and we haven't even taught it to her yet. Before we even taught her the word of wisdom she told us that coffee had been less appealing to her because she'd rather have God's energy that she gets from the word. When we taught her the word of wisdom she easily committed and throughout her coffee telling us she'd been living it ever since she's met with us and the one time she did drink coffee since than she'd thrown up. God has truly been preparing her for this commandment to be taught. I'm honesty pretty sad she has to wait a whole month to be baptized! She is probably more doctrinally accurate than over half the members of the church. 

It's been an incredible week, but also I got like 50% less sleep than usual because of the bed bug situation haha. I'm so grateful to be a part of this great work here in Chicago! I love being a missionary here! hope everyone has an amazing week! 

Elder Jensen

Pics:

1. Bose and Steve Abiola

2. chukwudi's baptism

3. The abiolas' baptism 

4. Us with chukwudi

5. Thrashed by the bed bugs 

6. A ridiculous looking Jehovahs witness with a painted hair line literally trying to Bible bash with us. It's pretty impressive that I got this shot but I mean just look at this dude he's absolutely hilarious. 

7. Horrifying bed bug

The Doctrines of the Kingdom are True

First off I got to go on exchanges to the west side (which honestly seems even rougher than the south side) I finally got to go with my boy Elder Bell from the MTC!! It was probably one of the most legendary exchanges of all time. We were on bikes and rode through the west side at superior speeds. Of course walking around everybody sees the white shirt and tie and asks us for change and of course we don't but we share some of "the word" with them haha. 

Also like tons of people are making these tiny little snow cone stands where they buy syrup and some small pieces of ice (like there are pretty pathetic snow cones) but I'm eating these things up because snow cones are my weakness! They are literally on like every corner. 

We were also able to have our first Mission leadership council with President Shumway this week which was pretty cool. It's interesting to see the different teaching style and goal setting than what we used to do with President Bingham. It'll be super cool to have two mission presidents. 

That person named Darlene I mentioned last week is still so solid. We taught her the plan of salvation and it literally took like 3 visits to get the whole thing because we're not supposed to stay longer than 45 min haha. She literally is the most prepared person I've ever taught. She has so many great questions and excellent understanding. It's really cool to see the light bulbs go off in her head over and over and over again. It reminds me of how all missionaries are when they are taught the plan of salvation in the MTC and they're all like super shook like "wow this makes Mega sense but I've never realized it until right now."

We taught her about the fall and when she figured it out for the rest of the lesson she was like "oh wow. OH WOW! You’re right! God doesn't make mistakes! This was all part of his plan! Why don't people know this! Why don't people listen to you guys! OH WOW!" She called us later that night and had read 2 Nephi 2, 2 Nephi 9, and was literally shook. When we taught her the rest of the plan with the three kingdoms we decided to bring her a large print Book of Mormon which has the Doctrine and Covenants in the back so decided to introduce the classic Bible scriptures that talk about the three kingdoms in Corinthians but also introduced the Doctrine and Covenants.

Well she came to church on Sunday, and told us she had read all of Doctrine and Covenants section 76, the Articles of Faith, the Official Declarations, the Book of Moses and is in 2nd Nephi in the Book of Mormon. She told us she believes it’s all true and has been praying to Heavenly Father for this for a while. SO AWESOME! She’s probably like one of the most fun people to teach. We set a date for her to be baptized that night. (In the South side you'll find so many flakes that we don't put them on date until they come to church the first time, because literally everyone would accept to be baptized probably before you teach them.) Darlene told us her only concern was she was reading the Book of Mormon more than "the word" and was wondering if that was wrong but then she told us God answered her and said that it is "the word" and it's her first time learning about it so it's definitely OK. 

For the rest of the week we had a lot of teaching opportunities and an awesome one was for a guy we're teaching named Chukwudi. He's getting baptized on Saturday and we went over the interview questions and it has been a remarkable repentance process. The man gave up a lot of things cold turkey and hasn't even looked back. It's been absolutely amazing and we're excited to see him enter the waters of baptism. Weeks leading up to baptisms are like the most stressful things on the planet, so this week's going to be insane but I'm pumped! 

Oh and last thing, on Sundays we schedule quite a few of lessons because generally all the Nigerians are off work that day. Every Sunday so far we've been fed some Nigerian food, but yesterday we got fed twice in a row. These Nigerians don't just give you a little. They give you a portion size "for a man," however I am not a man with a fufu gut haha. Yesterday we had fufu and agusi twice and I was more than full after the first! That stuff is super heavy!

Fufu is just like this play dough looking stuff that you dip in soup and then just eat it. It's pretty interesting. Agusi is this interesting soup that has a variety of meats and vegetables (and it had some Jamaican peppers and I was sweating, this stuff was almost as spicy as the Indian food!) but I got to try some cow leg, cow intestine, goat meat, you know the basics. I can't say it tastes like chicken. All the meat is like super rubbery. Even the chicken, so maybe it does taste like chicken. But if you don't eat it all they can be offended so thank goodness Elder Vantassell can pound it because I was super stuffed haha. It was pretty awesome! 

Hope everyone has an absolutely amazing week! 

Elder Jensen 

Probably Just Fireworks, Right?

This was another super busy amazing week! We were able to see a lot of miracles and find a lot more people to teach! 

One super cool miracle is there was an older African American lady who asked us if she could have a free Bible! She lived in the building where just about all of our Nigerian friends live so it was of no inconvenience. We dropped by and her name was Darlene, we asked if we could share a message with her. We walked in her apartment and there were literally pictures of Jesus everywhere, 3 huge study bibles lying around. She loves Jesus and praying and reading the Bible. I thought "OK this is either going to be really good or really bad." We were able to give Darlene her Bible and teach her about the restoration. I kid you not this lesson felt like it was in the district or something it was like a perfect lesson! She was so engaged and when we mentioned the Book of Mormon her eyes went super wide and she snatched that thing out of our hands super-fast!

We talked about the Book of Mormon and what it is and she was freaking out and was so excited to read it! We left her with the invitation to read it and came back a couple of days later. When we came back she had these little decorations on her Book of Mormon and she told us she had read 7 chapters, and had lots of questions. She told us one of her main questions was why we were elders when we were so young! Then she mentioned that she had asked God this question and found a picture of Jesus as a 12 year old teaching soon after and felt like God had answered her questions. She literally showed us her notes that she took while she was reading and I'm pretty sure she knows how to study the Book of Mormon and seek revelation way better than I do! She’s super awesome and it was a really awesome experience to teach her! She also said she's going to make it to church this next week so we're pumped! 

Also we taught this other lady named Virgie who is fluent in Ebonics and every time it says "ye" in the Book of Mormon she changes it to "y’all." I was trying so hard not to laugh during our lesson it was awesome haha. "And when y’all receive these things are y’all finna ask God or what?" - Moroni 10 Virgie style

So there's this religion on the Southside and they're called Hebrew Israelites. Naturally they believe Jesus was black and that all African American people are the real descendants of the Jews and that they are the only people who have the privilege of being called the house of Israel. They stand on the corner of the streets on the weekends in these long purple robes and yell through a megaphone for like 3 hours. They also refuse to shake our hands, I'm not sure if it’s because they don't like white people, or missionaries. But these people crack me up.

One thing is for sure though; they're definitely not the elect, so we generally try to avoid them. Besides all they'll ask is like "what color is Jesus?" and of course they'll pull out the scripture that says Christ's feet were like brass or something like that. You just have to say "It doesn't matter if he was black brown white or green as long as he's my Savior," and they pretty much lose their minds and condemn you to hell. It’s one of those things where you're like "wow bro I'm literally telling you that the authority from God to bind families eternally has been restored, and all you have to offer is knowledge of Christ's skin color." 

We had our legendary 4th of July this week which was literally insane. Usually holidays are awful but we were still able to have 7 lessons that day which I was pumped about. That night there were so many fireworks (well I think they were fireworks) that it sounded like we were in a battle zone or something. 

We were able to meet our new mission president this week president Shumway and his family. He's a younger guy and has 4 kids, ones on a mission and the other 3 are still in school! I really admire him and his family for coming out on a mission with all the kids still in school. It'd be super crazy to take on that role of being a mission president. He's a really awesome man and I'm excited to learn a lot from him! 

We went on exchanges this week and I went to the Morgan Park ward with Elder west! We spent most of our time in a neighborhood called Chatham (still on the Southside, the Southside is huge, the city is huge!) but it's where Chance the rapper grew up, so that's pretty cool. Of course Elder Dodson told me how easy it was to contact down there because that's where he served so all I had to do was say to some neighborhood homie walking around "Hey brother, did you get your daily dose of the word?" And he just comes walking right over to me and we talk about God and they all say the same things about God, "Well he woke me up this morning man, every day is a blessing." Then you share a scripture and pretty much always get their phone number and address, and there is a pretty high chance you'll never see them again. 

On the exchange we contacted this one lady right outside her car and we were just talking about how she was doing and she told us not so good and says "this happened last night" and her car had tons of bullet holes in it and the windows were shattered! Pretty crazy business happens after 11:00 it sounds like haha. I honestly don't get why so many shootings happen here because like these are some nice people. This place is fantastic! I must admit though I have never seen so many cops in my life! It’s super crazy! I'm sure if anybody wants to be a cop there are plenty of job openings on the Southside of Chicago! 

There is a law of opposition in all things. Chicago might be a super corrupt city, but there are so many elect here on the Southside it's unreal. It's been an absolutely amazing miracle and privilege to be able to be a part of it! 

Hope everyone has and awesome week! 

Elder Jensen

Pics:

Exchanges  

This is flippin America

Black Jesus and Black Captain America -- this must be the Southside 

For some reason all the Nigerian kids love playing with my hair 

From India to Africa in the Blink of an Eye

Oh my goodness gracious. This has absolutely been one of the most eventful weeks in my entire mission. 

My new area: the Hyde Park ward. Now there are 4 sets of missionaries in the Hyde Park ward. I'm convinced this is one of the highest baptizing wards in the United States. My new companion and I cover an area called Englewood. 

Englewood is like the Promised Land. You occasionally hear gunshots in the distance, see people peel out of nowhere trying to run from the homicide they just committed, you know the usual haha. There are cops like everywhere. We're like the only people who are white and now when you see a white person you're like "that guy looks ridiculous what is he even doing here." However this area is extremely busy, and it's because the missionaries have found an extremely high concentration of Nigerians in this area.

Nigerians are generally the most elect people you'll ever find -- humble and open-minded, ready to receive the gospel. In our area there is one building, we call it the Lowe building. It is so big and probably has 1000 people living in it, 800 of which are Nigerians. It's absolutely phenomenal. The missionaries here got one referral from that building (it's a building with security so you couldn't just walk in) and then they asked them if they know any friends, and then they asked them if they'd have any friends and on and on. There have been like 20 converts in this one building.

This week we had literally 7 baptisms, from that one building. The Hyde Park ward has so many baptisms that they only do a baptismal service once a month so that ward members can come and support! It’s insane. So although my new area might be super sketchy it's really not because we are actually in this building teaching Nigerian people all day. They are some of the most amazing people I've ever gotten to meet! 

So this week I got to learn a ton about the African culture! Our ward has had so many Nigerians joining in the last year, that at this point it’s probably 15% Nigerian. Our missionaries are now able to travel slightly outside of the area to nearer wards to teach Nigerians. There are so many Nigerians in the ward that we were able to get general authority approval to do it! So this week the ward had a super awesome event called Nigeria night! They had plenty of different African dishes, African dancing African clothes, etc. One of the people we were teaching gave me a Kampala so we were walking into Nigeria night looking extra fly. It was super awesome! 

So the two families who got baptized this weekend are absolutely amazing. I was really only able to help teach the last couple lessons to help prepare them for baptism, but it was super exciting! one is a single mom named precious, who has like 5 kids. They have some pretty gnarly African names like "Goodluck," "Goodness," and "Goodnews." They are some of the most prepared and elect people I've ever seen! Another family was a couple with their son, named Segun, Victoria, and Nifemi. They are also super elect! We’ve been able to find some more elect this week because the Nigerians are so good at giving us referrals! The missionary work excitement is spreading like wildfire throughout the ward and this single building is seriously probably going to be like 50% members of the church within 2 years. However people move in an out constantly as well which means more people to find and teach! 

We also teach a few African American people, some living in the building and others living outside the building. They excessively use the word finna and it's pretty legendary. 

My new companion is named Elder Van Tassell and he's pretty much a Santa Clara Gubler boy,  the rancher, farmer, wrestler, fisher with a toothpick always in his mouth sorta guy. The man exercises like crazy in the morning and I swear he has like infinite energy. It's super hard to keep up with him haha! He wakes up early to exercise and goes to bed as late as he can to study. He says that a missionary who gets more than 8 hours of sleep isn't doing it right. The man is a flipping beast!

Oh! And I finally saw Elder Avery schmutz at transfers! He was just getting ready to get headed home! But it was pretty cool to see someone from the home ward! 

I'd say that's about it for my week! This place is the Promised Land! I've never been more tired than now but I've never been happier either! Hope everyone has an amazing week! 

Elder Jensen